Saturday, September 17, 2011

Some thoughts around gear


Some statistics around the R6F V2 course. As I have already mentioned in an earlier post, broadly speaking the course is similar to the first addition with a similar distance, ascending and descending. There is a bit of metal thrown in for good measure. However this time the maximum gradient is only 15% and the longest climb is 3 kilometres.

But it would be remiss of me not to add a cautionary note as to gearing. Do think carefully about your bottom gear, as I have found a couple of short sections of road that will test most riders. Wayne and I have both ridden the course, he had compact cranks and I ran a 39 x 25, I would suggest that these are minimum required gears, and going lower may be a wise idea. Also consider your tyre choice carefully, learn from any issues that you encountered in the first race.

The weather forecast will help no end, at present it is looking like on race day we should have a rain free day with westerlies. More importantly where the weather will help will be with the rain we have had lately, and with the forecast rain over the coming week, the metal road sections will be infinitely more rideable than if they were bone dry.

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